The present invention relates to processing and display of images using a computer system.
An image obtained with a digital photographic camera can be edited using a computer system. A typical computer system includes a computer processor 110 (FIG. 1), a computer storage 120, and a user input device or devices 130 such as a keyboard and a mouse. Storage 120 stores digital data representing the image and also stores a computer program (with its software instructions and data) for image editing. The image is displayed on a computer monitor's screen 140, and edited by executing commands entered by a human user via input devices 130. The edited image (“current image”) is shown at 160 in FIG. 1. Editing may include changing brightness, contrast, hue, and/or other color attributes of all or part of the image. Special commands may be provided to display the original image, shown at 160.0, to allow visual comparison of the current image 160 with the original image. In this operation, original image 160.0 can be displayed immediately above, below, or side by side with image 160. The special commands do not require the user to specify the absolute position of image 160.0 on screen 140. Rather, the user specifies the relative position (above, or below, etc.) of image 160.0 relative to the current image 160. Alternatively, the user may specify a split-image display (FIG. 2), with half of the original image 160.0 superimposed on the corresponding half of the current image 160. See “EOS DIGITAL, Digital Photo Professional, E, Windows, INSTRUCTION MANUAL”, Canon Inc. 2004, page 2-40 and page 3-6.